Re: 21.2.90 pretest, 21.3, 21.4...

[Eli Zaretskii]

On Mon, 4 Nov 2002, Juanma Barranquero wrote:

> Still, I wonder if we should try to pack less punch in each release, and
> release a bit faster than we're doing today.

As someone who was involved in pretest releases up until 21.2.90, I can 
assure you that the schedule for the releases was not determined by the 
desire to put ``more punch'', but simply by the availability of free time
to make the pretests and solve bugs reported by the pretesters.

> Also, it's tough trying to evangelize people when I know that some
> much-appreciated features are just in the HEAD and won't see the light
> in a year or two...

As long as we keep the scheme whereby bug-fix releases precede the
next development release, the time until the next release from HEAD
is largely determined by the amount of bugs we deem severe enough to
fix, and the available resources to fix them.  The only way to speed that 
up is to have more people working on the release branch.

> Of course, I don't know what we should do, other than attracting more
> people to Emacs development. Perhaps a tentative schedule like the one
> in GCC would be a first step, but I'm not sure.

Personally, I think it'd be a sad day when the quality of the released 
Emacs versions will be anywhere near GCC's.  Since GCC 3.0, I don't 
think there was a released version without a couple of major bugs.  With 
all its limitations, I'd vote for what we have now in Emacs any time.